| |
Dear friends,
When our hearts are ready and we need and want
enough, love can enter our lives. It has the power to heal
each of us and to heal life around us. This I have come to
know through my own life story.
Years ago I was desperate. I felt hopeless.
Despite all my efforts, I could find no way to improve or change
my life situation. Life held little meaning. I was lonely and
sad. Many nights while my family slept, I would sit in the
darkness and cry and cry. One night my inner pain became unbearable.
In total despair, I begged, “Where are you? God, where
are you? Please, where are you?” As I closed my eyes
I was filled with an intense energy. There, in my inner field
of vision, appeared an Eye. A stillness and peace unlike anything
I had ever felt before came over me. As I gazed directly into
this Eye, I could hear the steady rhythm of each in breath
and out breath of my own breathing. This Eye was a part of
me and yet it was separate. I knew then with absolute certainty
that there was a Presence deep inside me that was Real. I was
not alone. I had never been alone. In those moments, I had
been graced with a glimpse of Oneness. I was left with a feeling
of awe and a deep, deep longing.
A few months after this experience, I learned
of a group of women who met weekly to meditate and do dream
work. I decided to join these women. They practiced the Sufi
meditation of love that involves submerging oneself in the
feeling of love. Any thoughts that arise are just drowned in
this love. I had been meditating by myself since I was a teenager.
This did not prepare me for the experience I was to have that
first evening. On closing my eyes, a burning fire flowed throughout
my body. The energy was so powerful that I felt nauseated and
faint. I was not frightened and yet I felt a tremendous urge
to escape. I literally clung onto the sides of the cushion
on which I was sitting to will myself to stay! After meditation
I immediately went to the restroom to collect myself as I splashed
cold water on my face and arms. I don't remember much that
took place after meditation. Even though I did not understand
what was happening, I knew this was where I belonged. For days
after, my body felt weak.
I continued to meet with these women that practiced
this Sufi meditation. It was difficult for me to share dreams
as these felt so private, so personal. After a few weeks of
meeting, I shared a dream. In this dream a man is embracing
me. It is a lover's embrace, intimately passionate. I had never
felt love like this before. I was loved completely. It was
a perfect love. When this embrace ended I went into a warehouse.
In this warehouse old men were sitting at a table carding wool.
As they carded the wool they would stroke their long white
beards with their fingers. They worked in silence. They had
been together for so long that they knew and read each other's
minds. These old men with the long white beards showed me how
to spin threads from this soft warm wool. Together we weaved
these fine threads among people of many colors. There were
smiles on their faces. They were very pleased to share this
knowledge with me. The dream ended with one of the old men
taking out his false teeth. The women told me that there is
a Sufi saying, “You are a Sufi when your heart is as
soft and warm as wool.” At the time, I knew nothing of
Sufism and the dream made little sense to me. What remained
with me was the feeling of love.
The longing and my devotion for this love turned
my attention inward. I began to have dreams that brought up
my innermost fears and secrets. These dreams pointed to my
experiences in which my feminine was desecrated growing up
and living as an adult in a culture that valued the masculine.
Over and over again figures would appear in dreams that desecrated
my body and dismissed and degraded me emotionally. Emotions
would wash over me that were overwhelming and terrifying. The
dreams were painful reminders of the damage I experienced for
being female. Even though I had been through years of therapy,
it wasn't until these dreams came that I began feeling the
depth of the pain and the emotions associated with the abuse.
Abuse that I felt powerless to stop. I felt the horror, the
fear, the anger, the shame, the guilt, the hopelessness, the
hatred and the disgust in every cell of my being. Layer by
layer, again and again, deeper and deeper, I was taken into
these emotions. There was such love at this time as well. At
night, my Beloved would come to me and I would surrender myself
to the intimacy and ecstasy of this perfect love. Unknown to
me at the time, the old men with the long white beards carding
wool were softening my heart. Softening my heart so that love
could come in. The Sufi path created a container to hold me.
The women in the meditation group created a sacred space for
my dreams and accepted me in my brokenness.
There were also dreams that held promise, that
revealed the beauty and wonder of my true nature. Healing came
in unexpected ways. Once, in the afternoon I felt a “knowing” that
I was to go for a walk. I allowed myself to be taken to a secluded
area a few miles from my home. There I discovered a path leading
through a marshland to a forest. When I saw this path, an inner
voice told me that this was where I was to go for healing.
I took this path through the marshland and followed a deer
trail into the forest. I came to a hollow on the forest floor
next to a tree. I lie down in this hollow and found myself
cradled by the roots of the tree in a bed of moss and leaves.
The overhead branches and leaves created an umbrella in which
streaks of sunlight streamed through. For two summers, weather
permitting, I went to this forest and would be at peace in
the arms of nature. In the winter, when the snow became deep
I skied to the forest and would sit on a fallen branch. Again
I would feel a deep peace settle over me. Late in summer, during
the second year of my visits, I found I could not walk to my
resting place. Swarms of mosquito and gnats attacked me! I
realized then that I did not need to come back. Earth and nature
had gifted me with a healing. It was complete. Since then,
I have returned to the edge of the marsh and the distant forest.
I am always amazed to find no evidence of a path.
My life slowly changed over the years. My devotion
and longing for my Beloved kept my focus turned inward. The
shattered and fragmented pieces of who I was began to come
together. I began to fully understand that the dream figures
were also parts of me. I learned to forgive myself and to let
go the self hatred that came with the realization that I in
some form or another abused and degraded myself. I had to let
go of the inner patterns of abuse and degradation that I had
perpetuated within myself. I learned to respect and love myself.
My outward life changed as well. Life still has its difficulties
and yet I see and feel something else. Life holds wonder, beauty
and joy as well. Maybe this is what Christ meant when he said, “Let
thy eye be single.” Life holds all of it---we cannot
exclude any part of it. We need the joy in life as well as
the suffering.
I strive to be present in each moment while
continuing to be inwardly focused. It is in this way that I
am able to catch the threads of love woven in the fabric of
my everyday life. A dream, a knowing, a chance meeting, a kind
touch, an experience in nature, a vision will come to me as
I need help finding my way in the world. As I trust these threads
more and more, guidance comes in unexpected and surprising
ways. Last year, I was given a reminder of what it was like
to live life always in fear and sadness. I became ill and needed
a hysterectomy. I began to feel a violation of my feminine.
During the weeks prior to surgery I slipped into depression
and paranoia. I relived past trauma. Then, I was given a glimpse
of reality. I prayed for help and help was given. The depression
and paranoia lifted. I made a decision to be fully engaged
in life. I choose life, the wonder, the beauty and joy of life!
This web site is a space for those whose hearts
are longing for this love and long to feel the joy and wonder
in their life. The Imperishable Treasure is an act of devotion,
an act of love.
With love, Diane Evans
Diane Evans owns and operates a small business
with her husband in northern Minnesota. Diane has followed
the Naqshbandi Sufi Path since 1993. She has a daughter who is married and a son. |
|
